New Jersey Police Lieutenant Arrested for Drunk Driving @ .36% BAC [Extra Footage] – Everything Law and Order Blog

This shorter video provides a different perspective on the drunk driving arrest of Lieutenant John Chew of the Lower Township, New Jersey Police Department on April 27, 2018.

On that date at approximately 6:28 pm, Lower Township police communications received a call from a concerned citizen regarding a black Chevrolet truck driving erratically on Breakwater Road toward Route 9. The citizen described the vehicle as being operated at a high rate of speed and in a manner unsafe to other vehicles on the road — reporting that the driver had already ran a light and nearly crashed multiple times. Two officers were assigned to the call and responded, quickly locating the vehicle and noting that “the driver was not able to maintain the[ir] lane of travel,” and that “the vehicle cross[ed] over the center line as well as the fog line numerous times” while it was under their observation.

In the area of Route 9 and Honeysuckle road, the lead officer attempted to stop the truck, but its driver turned onto Honeysuckle and continued for another quarter mile before coming to a stop. At that point the driver of the vehicle was identified as Lower Township Police Lieutenant John A. Chew. The responding officers contacted their command staff per department protocol, and after some attempts at field sobriety tests, Chew was placed under arrest for driving under the influence.

Chew’s attorney hired expert witness Kevin Flanagan to review the entire arrest. Flanagan, now retired from law enforcement, spent 16 years working in and eventually leading the Alcohol Testing Unit of the New Jersey State Police. Flanagan authored a highly detailed 12 page report covering every possible deficiency in the case against Chew. Nevertheless, on September 13, 2018 John Chew pleaded guilty to driving under the influence. His driver’s license was revoked for seven months followed by six months with an ignition interlock, and he was required to spend a minimum of six hours a day for two consecutive days in an Intoxicated Driver Resource Center or IDRC. (IDRCs provide a 12-hour class conveying information about New Jersey’s alcohol and drug laws and the effect of alcohol and drugs on the body. They also conduct screenings for referrals or treatment of substance abuse issues.) Chew was also assessed $689 in fines. That battery of punishments is standard for a first DUI in New Jersey.

John Chew is no longer employed by Lower Township Police Department. He is currently receiving a pension of $41,986.56 (*this is a corrected figure*).

The complete 79-page case record is at http://tiny.cc/DUI.

About the discrepancy between the measured and reported BAC figures:

Chew provided two breath samples, and each was measured using two different technologies: infrared (IR) and electrochemical oxidation in a fuel cell (EC). Two samples and two tests per sample means four measurements. For Chew, those were .382%, .377%, .374%, and .367% (in descending order).

So how did Chew have a BAC of .36%?

In March 2008, the NJ Supreme Court decided State v. Chun, 943 A.2d 114 (N.J. 2008), easily the most important drunk driving case in New Jersey history. Chun set the standard for drunk driving litigation by establishing the procedures and protocols for breath testing in the state utilizing the then-new Alcotest machines. Draeger, the machine’s manufacturer, was an intervenor in the case, which subjected the Alcotest to an almost-unimaginable level of scrutiny — down to its source code. The end result was a court decision upholding the validity of the Alcotest, subject to some relatively minor tweaks. The full 25 page opinion provides a lot of key background info, but here is the relevant quote:

The Alcotest IR and EC tests each return a BAC to three decimal places, accurate to within +/- .005%. It “then reports the final BAC test result, which is always the lowest of the four acceptable readings, that is, readings within acceptable tolerance, which the device is programmed to truncate to two decimal places. Truncating, as opposed to rounding, involves simply reporting the first and second decimal places and dropping the third. For example, by truncating, a reading of 0.079 percent BAC would be reported as 0.07 and a reading of 0.089 percent BAC would be reported as 0.08. The effect of truncating, as opposed to rounding, is to under-report the concentration, to the benefit of the arrestee.”

Chew’s actual BAC was likely around .375%, not .36%. But the law defines its own world, and in the eyes of the law his BAC was .36%, because all measurements were truncated (to .38, .37, .37, and .36) and only the lowest was reported.

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27 thoughts on “New Jersey Police Lieutenant Arrested for Drunk Driving @ .36% BAC [Extra Footage]”
  1. Cops would have covered this up had they not had the body cameras on them. There was no doubt watching the whole arrest video. They would have had someone drive him home and cover the whole thing up.

    If that was us, we would be taking it in the ass.

  2. This makes me sick. Any citizen acting like he did would never get the same treatment. The thin blue line makes me sick. I have the utmost respect for law enforcement but anybody else would have been handcuffed, their mug shot visible to the public and been tied to the gurney and loaded in the “rig” and transported to the hospital. He should have been treated like everybody else.

  3. I wonder how much law enforcement WASN'T being done by th is guy. He thinks he should be received special treatment which means he likely extended that special treatment to others while he was on the clock. Not a good person.

  4. Your $41,986.56 is incorrect. There is more than one John A Chew, the one receiving the $41,986.56 was born in 1948 and retired in 2008. The correct John A. Chew was born in 1970 from the same area. In 2019 he received a single payout of $33,003.30 in 2019 and as of yet is not getting monthly pension cheques. His yearly salary was $127,241.94 and his retirement date was April 2019.. 2 different John A. Chews, same area, different birth and different retirement dates.

  5. What a scumbag and disgrace to the uniform. He should have had to pull some jail time and had his retirement revoked!

  6. No jail time nothing the good ol’Boy system is alive a well in the cape why haven’t the feds or the state police done an investigation of this case why was it allowed to be investigated by lower township ??? I have no faith in the lower police Dept and it’s ability to book one of its own even the judges are in on it sickening !

  7. Well this Officer needs to be fired! Not for the DUI but for the blatant disrespectful action to the other officers and his actions during the arrest. I hope he is without a badge!

  8. @ Real World Police
    I’m not sure if it’s possible but, I would like to see some of John Chew’s body cam footage. After seeing how he was treating his fellow officers, it makes me wonder how he was treating civilians. I mean people who are intoxicated tend to act completely different, I just think it would be nice to see his better side/ his sober side. Ya know?

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